The study focuses on Javanese who shared a common area of origin, as well as local people and other transmigrants who have contributed to changing the agricultural and non-agricultural behaviour of the Javanese. Social relationships therefore were important in fostering communication and understanding, particularly between settlers and the indigenous people. Thus, each group had to be understood as part of a network, and household respondents were chosen from each group (Table 1.1).
Among the principal criteria used for choosing Javanese respondents were the following: Javanese migrants in both swamp and upland locations should have previous agricultural experience, originate from the same community in Java, share the same culture, especially in relation to agricultural practices, and have moved to the new location at about the same time, so that they could be expected to have had a similar period of adaptation.
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Table 1.1 Household Respondents
Field Site Key Respondents Other Respondents
South K alim antan
The daily-flooded swamp site
East Javanese transmigrants
Javanese transmigrants Tamban Javanese Local people: Banjarese The high-tide swamp site Ponorogo transmigrants Javanese transmigrants
Local people: Banjarese The indirect swamp site Ponorogo transmigrants Javanese transmigrants Local people: Banjarese
E ast K alim antan
Bukit Village Ponorogo transmigrants East Javanese transmigrants
Indigenous Pasir people Field Research, 1991-1992
The non-Javanese respondents were randomly selected from the indigenous people, specifically Banjarese and Pasir people who were available in the field sites when the survey was conducted. The Banjarese identified themselves as the local people of South Kalimantan. The term ‘Banjarese’ means ‘Islamic people’ (Lebar, 1972 cited in Watson, 1987:94). The Banjarese originated from intermarriage among different ethnic groups, including the indigenous Dayak people, coastal Malays who migrated to the south coast of Kalimantan, Indians and Javanese migrants from Demak (Riwut, 1979; Saleh, 1962:17). Banjarese culture clearly reflects this mixture, a combination of Malay, Javanese and Dayak cultures (Saleh, 1962:62). The Pasir people called themselves the indigenous people of the Pasir district. The Pasir people originated from the
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Dayak Ngaju (Riwut, 1979). The term ‘Ngaju’ refers to udik (upper river). Thus ‘Pasir people' means the Dayak who came from the upper river (Pasir River) region (Riwut, 1979) and converted to Islam. Although the Pasir language differs from other Dayak groups, Pasir customs and agricultural practices clearly reflect Dayak culture.
The study combines quantitative and qualitative methods, with particular emphasis on qualitative methods because qualitative and quantitative methods complement one another. Qualitative research allows a researcher to obtain detailed contextual information which many researchers believe to be much stronger and richer than that derived from quantitative techniques (Chadwick et cil, 1984:206-212; Ragin, 1987:17). Qualitative research tends to be case-oriented and historical in approach, being more concerned with individual cases of the phenomenon under study and the processes involved (Ragin, 1987:17). Data are gathered first hand through in-depth interviews or participant observation methodologies, which are more flexible than quantitative data collection methods. This 'natural' data is particularly useful in understanding cause-effect relationships in the total context of the study. Qualitative techniques were very useful in obtaining data that could not have been gathered from questionnaires and formal interviews. Thus, factors that were not known or predicted at the outset were explored as they were discovered.
The major limitation of this method is its dependency on one or a few case studies, so it is difficult to generalise from them (Bryman, 1988:87-91; Chadwick et al, 1984:212; May, 1993:159). In addition, qualitative research usually involves a single researcher or a small group of researchers, restricting the possibility for replication over larger numbers of cases. The importance of the researcher's individual role may lead to subjectivity and the collection of biased information which may strongly affect the reliability of data. This is the
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major criticism made by quantitative researchers, because reliability is a very important issue in quantitative data collection. By contrast, qualitative researchers do not define reliability as a significant problem (Chadwick et al,
1984:212-215; Nachmias and Nachmias, 1987:297) because their main concern is for data validity and contextual meaning. Thus, in order to obtain rich, accurate and reliable data, I have chosen to combine these methods.
Quantitative data collection in this study was based on two data sets: one relating to the agroecosystems (agricultural ecosystems),1 the other to the human social systems.2 Data on agroecosystems were mostly gathered from secondary sources, especially from research institutes such as the Research Institute for Food Crops at Banjarbaru, South Kalimantan; Agency for Agricultural Research and Development (AARD) Indonesia; Land and Water Research Group (LAWOO), the Netherlands; the West German Transmigration Area Development Project (TAD); and the Soil Research Institute at Bogor. Feasibility studies that had been conducted in the study locations by the Department of Transmigration and related departments, were also useful, as were data from regional government offices and libraries. The agroecosystem data included information on the ecological factors that determine agricultural production, including the physical environment and the biological components of vegetation and fauna.
The information obtained on the human social system consisted of two major data bases: one covering agricultural management strategies, and the other
'Agroecosystems are the domesticated ecosystems (Odum, 1984:5), the interplay between components affected by environmental factors, such as the natural ecosystem, and human impacts on and manipulation of the ecosystem (Gliessman, 1990:5).
2
'Human social systems are made up of mutually interacting components: as population, technology, social structure, and ideology. Each component of the human social system exerts an influence on every other component and is also influenced in its own behaviour by those other components' (Rambo and Sajise,
covering socioeconomic characteristics of households and individuals. These data were collected using a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods, including participant observation, field measurements, and formal and informal interviews. Thus the study used basic ethnographic field methods as well as conventional survey techniques. The agricultural management data obtained includes information on agricultural knowledge, beliefs and rituals relating to agricultural practices and control of natural resources. For the Javanese transmigrants this information covered both their current practices in South and East Kalimantan and those typical of the period when they were in Java. Data were gathered on agricultural techniques, soil management, cropping patterns and the agricultural calendar, fertilizer use, pest management and the pattern of work. A list of data categories was used as a guide to ensure relatively standard coverage of topics which had to be probed and developed in the field. Other factors that were not known or predicted in advance were explored as they were discovered. The data on socioeconomic characteristics and some data on agricultural production, such as the cropping patterns, inputs and yields, were largely derived from qualitative material.
The field studies in each province were carried out in five steps. The first was a reconnaissance of several transmigration settlement units throughout the province. The major purposes were to identify appropriate locations for the intensive study and to obtain general information about the agroecosystems and people through exploratory observation, and interviews with key persons. These included village officers and informal leaders, and some Javanese and local transmigrants.
The second step consisted of participant-observation, as well as of other techniques of qualitative data collection. In-depth interviews with key respondents and key informants, and focus-group interviews with small groups
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of men, women, and youths were conducted. These interviews provided more detailed information on knowledge, attitudes, behaviour and perceptions of the new environment as well as an understanding of the process of Javanese adaptation to, and mechanisms for coping with, a new socioecological environment. As my knowledge of the key issues relating to this study developed, I also revised most of the questions contained in the East Kalimantan questionnaires, and prepared new questionnaires for South Kalimantan.
The third step of the fieldwork included a pre-test of the questionnaires, in- depth interviews and further revision of the questionnaires. The major purposes of the pre-test were to ensure that respondents would not have difficulties in understanding the questions, and to determine whether the questionnaires were comprehensible in terms of the sequence of questions. At the same time, in-depth interviews continued, enabling other relevant issues to be identified and incorporated into the questionnaire.
All locations were surveyed during the fourth step of the fieldwork. Data were gathered by interviewing respondents with structured questionnaires. Six interviewers in East Kalimantan and two in South Kalimantan were employed throughout the survey. All were students from the Agricultural Faculty Mulawarman or Lambung Mangkurat University. They were trained in interviewing techniques before the survey began, although all had previous experience as interviewers, and had often acted as research assistants in their faculties.
The questionnaires varied according to the study location. In East Kalimantan, three questionnaires were used, the first for key household respondents and other groups of Javanese transmigrants. This questionnaire covered their backgrounds, knowledge of and behaviour towards the new
ecosystem, and agricultural practice. The second was used only for key respondents from Ponorogo. It gathered more detailed information about agricultural activities, including systems, patterns, and problems; land ownership; knowledge of and perceptions towards the new ecosystem; and differences between the transmigrants’ destinations and places of origin. The last questionnaire obtained more detailed data on agricultural input and output, income and non-agricultural activities, and was administered to both groups of respondents.
In South Kalimantan, four questionnaires were used. The first was for the key respondents, Javanese migrants from Ponorogo in the high-tide and indirect swamp locations, and East Javanese migrants in the daily-flooded swamp site. The questions covered their Javanese background; knowledge of, attitudes and behaviour towards their new location; agricultural systems and related factors and problems; and their perceptions of their social environment. The second questionnaire was administered to local Banjarese only and concerned the history and motivation of the local people and their perception of the Javanese. I did not use a questionnaire for local people in East Kalimantan, but carried out in-depth interviews using an interview guide. This was because the Pasir people were not directly involved in the transmigration project, and their numbers were too small for a quantitative survey. The third questionnaire was administered to the second generation of Javanese who had migrated from Tamban, the neighbouring sub district. It included questions on their agricultural background, agricultural management and knowledge, and perceptions of the tidal swamp agroecosystems. The last questionnaire contained more detailed questions on agricultural and non- agricultural activities, income and living conditions.
The final step of these field studies was to conduct a last round of qualitative data collection to re-check the validity of data recorded in the survey
questionnaires, and to probe and develop my understanding of certain issues that had emerged during the previous steps.
Field work was conducted over 14 months, from April 1991 to May 1992. The study was carried out first in East Kalimantan from May 1991 to October 1991, and from October 1991 to March 1992 in South Kalimantan. The rest of the time was taken up by investigation of the origin of the Javanese in East Java, particularly in Ponorogo, and secondary data collection in Jakarta, Bogor and Jogyakarta. During the field work, I stayed with Javanese transmigrant families from Ponorogo in Bukit Village and in the daily-flooded swamp, with a Banjarese family in the indirect swamp site, and in the ex-transmigration office in the high-tide swamp village. I stayed in these locations for a period and then returned to the cities of Samarinda or Banjarmasin for some days to revise questionnaires, gather secondary data, or discuss issues with experts, especially those from Mulawarman and Lambung Mangkurat Universities, and from the West German and LA WOO projects.